Chapter 2 - THE PHOTOGRAPH
“Maya. Stop.”
Adrian’s voice wasn’t loud, but it cut through the murmurs of the ballroom like a crack of thunder.
I stopped halfway to the double doors. I didn't turn around immediately. I took a slow, deep breath, feeling the heavy leather strap of my mother’s old bag digging into my shoulder.
I heard footsteps rushing across the polished marble. Not Adrian’s heavy dress shoes. The sharp, frantic clicking of Vanessa’s stilettos.
“Give that back to me!” Vanessa hissed.
“Don’t touch it,” Adrian commanded.
I turned around.
Adrian was standing in the center of the dance floor, staring at the cream-colored invitation I had handed him. But he wasn’t looking at the handwritten note he had sent me. He was looking at the small, glossy photograph I had tucked behind it.
Vanessa was trying to snatch it from his hands, her perfect bridal composure completely shattering. Her face was flushed, her jaw clenched in sudden, raw panic.
“Adrian, she’s lying,” Vanessa stammered, pulling at his arm. “She photoshopped that! Maya is obsessed with you. She’s trying to ruin our day!”
Adrian didn’t look at her. He kept his eyes locked on the picture.
He slowly looked up at me. His face had lost all its color.
“Maya,” Adrian said, his voice trembling. “Where did you get this?”
I walked back toward them. The circle of guests parted for me. Nobody was pretending not to listen anymore.
“I took it,” I said calmly. “Three years ago. At the charity gala where you and Vanessa supposedly met for the first time.”
Adrian looked back down at the photograph.
It showed Vanessa standing on a balcony, smoking a cigarette, looking over her shoulder. But it wasn’t her face that had made Adrian stop breathing.
It was her neck.
In the photograph, Vanessa was wearing a heavy, vintage sapphire and diamond necklace.
“That’s my mother’s necklace,” Adrian whispered.
Vanessa backed away, her hands shaking. “No! It’s a replica! It’s fake!”
“My mother wore that necklace the night she had her stroke,” Adrian said, his voice dropping into a terrifyingly quiet register. “The paramedics said she wasn’t wearing it when they found her. You told me you helped me search the house for it. You held my hand while I cried because it was gone.”
“She’s framing me!” Vanessa cried, pointing a manicured finger at me.
“Vanessa,” I said, my voice steady. “You’re wearing the exact same custom dress in that photo that you wore the night Adrian’s mother died. But you told Adrian you were in London that weekend.”
The reversal hit the room like a physical blow.
Vanessa wasn’t just a jealous wife trying to push away a childhood friend. She had been in Adrian’s house the night his mother collapsed. She had taken the necklace. And she had lied about how they met.
Adrian stared at the woman he had just married.
“You were there,” Adrian said. “When my mother died.”
“Adrian, please,” Vanessa begged, tears finally spilling down her cheeks. “I can explain.”
“You let me believe she was alone,” Adrian choked out.
He flipped the photograph over, looking for a date stamp.
But there wasn’t a date stamp on the back.
Instead, Adrian’s brow furrowed. He peeled a small, yellowed piece of paper off the back of the photo. It had been taped there.
“What is this?” Adrian asked.
I looked at the yellowed paper.
“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “I found the photo in your mother’s old Bible yesterday. That paper was stuck to it.”
Adrian held it up to the chandelier light.
May you like
It was an old, faded ticket.
And the moment Adrian’s seventy-two-year-old father, Thomas, stepped forward and saw what kind of ticket it was, the old man gasped and grabbed his chest.
